Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Ducks

Vet Appointment

We got home from running errands Saturday night, and found the dog that broke into the ducks' pen snooping around the pen again. The ducks were all in the pen, but Daffy was lying on the ground....alive, thankfully. We got the flashlight and found that one duck, Dolly, had had her gashes re-opened, and the other ducks were scraped up. We got them all inside and washed them off. Dolly had huge gashes and Pearl (a crested Pekin) was slightly bloody. Daffy didn't loo good at all. His leg, we discovered, was the source of his problems. He just held it behind him, never using it. We thought it was either broken or worse: paralyzed. We called the local vet, and they didn't take poultry. So we called Animal Sciences, and just a trip down there would $140. But they gave us some names of other vets that would take "exotics". The first was a keeper. We took Daffy in, and the people were very good and very nice. They did an X-ray on Daffy, and came back with the results. No broken bones, no paralysis! Slight nerve damage, possibly, but after some pain killer, he should be okay. They gave us seven days worth of painkiller, not shots, but honey-flavored medicine. The whole trip was $150, still quite a bit, but less than the Animal Science place would have been!! Daffy is doing so much better already; using his leg little by little. Here are the X-rays:I just thought it's cool to see a duck X-ray! (The little white spots are just stones in his gizzard)

Three Strikes and....You're Out!Too much. When we got home from the vet, the dog was back in the pen! Third time in two weeks. We got it out quickly. It didn't hurt anybody too badly, but again Dolly's wounds were re-opened. My mom called Animal Control, finally. Sunday, we'd talked to the owners of the dog, and they said they would tie it up. But apparently, they didn't. I feel bad for them, but we haven't seen the dog since. The ducks are doing much better, especially Daffy!

Thank you very much. Well, my dad was talking about that, and the neighbor said they would pay for the ducks (that was before the vet). They'd tried to keep the dogs in their porch with plexi-glass, screen, and everything possible, but it hadn't worked.

I know! They were really nice, but the cost to have them done was about $90.

I thoguht about that... The dogs haven't been back, but other dogs could be. We may need to consider an electric fence, but it might cost quite a bit. Plus, we've worked days to make the pen dog-proof!

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About Me

I love chickens and have plenty of them. It all started in 2006, when I started the 4-H Chick-Chain project and received 28 chicks. We continue adding to our mess of birds each year. We received 44 little chicks in the mail in late March of 2008 and also hatched chicks for the first time, and those little babies are now grown hens. This past year we bought some different breeds from the Co-op, along with 4 ducklings. Our chicken breeds consist of Polish, Cochins, RIRs, Ameraucanas, many many Silkies, and lots of other fun breeds. We have six ducks, who go all about the backyard like a gang. Our total amount of poultry is currently around 40.